A Provincetown Path Long Gone

A lovely view of Provincetown Harbor was found down Hollyhock Lane.

At one time there was a lovely little footpath known as Hollyhock Lane between 271 and 273 Commercial Street, between the buildings that are now Tin Pan Alley and Board Stiff.
The path lead from Commercial Street, in front of Town Hall, to the beach and the harbor. It was chock-full of greenery and flowers, mostly hollyhocks, and this scene was the subject of many popular postcards over quite a period of years.

This card had several printings over the years, with
this same photo colored differently at least three times.

The postcard above has no postmark to show its time period, but the white border dates it somewhere between 1915 and 1930, when WW I had caused American printers to begin conserving ink by printing short of the edges, with a colorless border left around the images on the postcards they were printing.
On the left, this popular postcard of the day shows a woman posing on the footpath in the view from the opposite direction, seen as one would walk up Hollyhock Lane from the beach toward Commercial Street, Town Hall and the Pilgrim Monument.
As with other early footpaths around town, this one is gone today. A little trail between the buildings still exists, now hidden by a large wooden gate, but this former flower-lined path is no longer that charming little walkway open to the public, and no longer leads folks to those gorgeous views of the beach and Provincetown Harbor.
There are still a few nice little footpaths to the harbor and to other spots around PTown, though, and I'll try to feature some of them shortly, but in the meantime, keep an eye out for a couple of these that you just might find on your own.